classic film | The Age of Intelligent Machines

November 10, 2015

Dear readers,

From my archives, I wanted to share this classic documentary film and book from the late 1980s, almost 30 years ago. It’s an interesting restrospective of my early visions of the future of computing, along with commentary and insights from many industry experts.

I wrote and produced the film in 1987 to accompany the museum exhibit “Robots and Beyond.” The film became the basis for my 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. It toured nationally across science and technology history museums.

It won several film festival awards, including the Council on International Non-theatrical Events Golden Eagle.

Also showcases vintage footage of my friend Stevie Wonder, who was my musical collaborator in developing the Kurzweil Music Systems synthesizer.

The Age of Intelligent Machines book is also available in full on this website, a link is below. Enjoy the film and book!

— Ray Kurzweil

The documentary film’s original 1987 description

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press series The Age of Intelligent Machines was produced for the science museum exhibition “Robots and Beyond: The Age of Intelligent Machines.” This film was produced for a mainstream audience, and focuses on developments in artificial intelligence. Soundtrack features music by award winning recording artist Stevie Wonder. Film series features two parts: “Machines that Think” and “Intelligence, It’s Amazing!”

A survey of artificial intelligence showing AI at work and under development. The paradoxes, promise and challenges of advanced computer science, with authorities Marvin Minsky, Roger Schank, Raj Reddy and other leaders in the field.

Machines that talk and listens. Machines that move like humans. Machines that learn. Products of advanced computer science, they challenge the world as never before. Called artificial intelligence, this science offers new hope and unprecedented power. How will the next industrial revolution affect our lives? How will the world adapt? With computer science experts from major research centers and corporations.

I actually saw the museum exhibit “Robots and Beyond” back in 1989 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I remember seeing Harold Cohen’s AARON and a few other interesting exhibits. This year I attended the exhibit “Robot Revolution” at the same museum, where it is debuting and runs till the end of the year.

How far have robots come in 25 years? Perhaps not quite as far as I would have imagined back then, but still quite a long way, especially in the field of machine vision, and with more dramatic advances likely in the next 5 years and beyond.

In some ways, computers have come much farther than anybody but Kurzweil expected. The advertising brochure (not written by Kurzweil) for the 1989 exhibit stated that “A computer comparable to the human brain would have to be 100 stories tall and as big as Texas.” Fancy that!

Now, according to Kurzweil’s projections, modern supercomputers have reached that parity, with desktop machines following by the end of this decade. I think that’s pretty much in line with 25 years of exponential advancement.

I visited the MOSI as a kid, and barely remember the German WW II submarine. As an adult, I’ll look into that for a future visit back to Chi. It was interesting to get the blast from the past, see and hear a young Ray, and the other science luminaries, and hear them describe the ideas they use to program hearing and vision. Very enjoyable.

That brings back memories, and I still have the book in my bookshelf. At the time I noted Harold Cohen’s work with AARON but being a fan of the photorealists, I never took time to appreciate what Cohen had achieved. I found this recent talk by him enlightening.